Once in a while a play announces its central conflict with one line of dialogue. In the case of August Wilson’s drama “The Piano Lesson,” that line is repeated often enough, with near-comic frequency, that no one can miss the point. And Berniece has good reason for her stubbornness.

“The Piano Lesson” — winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for drama — has come home. It began life in 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theater, which is now offering a majestic revival, a production that makes clear why the play was showered with praise.

Sitting right there, stage right, is the object in question: a handsome upright piano decorated with exquisitely hand-carved faces. To an antiques collector, it would be a prize (and indeed a white man with money has expressed strong interest). To the Charles family, living in Pittsburgh in 1936, only two generations away from slavery, the piano symbolizes their heritage and the family’s past sacrifices (those beautifully carved faces are of their ancestors).

Berniece (Eisa Davis), a young widow with an 11-year-old daughter, lives with her uncle Doaker (Keith Randolph Smith), a longtime railroad man, and she would rather cut off her right arm than let that piano go. To her brother, Boy Willie (LeRoy McClain), the instrument’s half-owner, the piano is just a means to an end. The money he could get for it would enable him to buy the land down South that his forebears once worked as slaves and sharecroppers.

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Mr. McClain and Malenky Welsh.Credit
Joan Marcus

Theatergoers who are fans of Mr. Wilson’s work know that before his death in 2005, he wrote a series of 10 plays, each representing the African-American experience in one particular decade of the 20th century. “Fences,” his other Pulitzer Prize winner, was set in the 1950s and told the story of a promising baseball player who ended up working as a garbageman. It was revived on Broadway last season and earned Tony Awards for both its leads, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.

“The Piano Lesson” tells a more haunting story, both literally and figuratively. On the literal side, various characters claim to see the spirit of Sutter, a man from the family’s Southern hometown who recently met his death by falling (or being pushed) down a well. The final appearance of Sutter’s ghost looks and feels a little too much like a scene from the horror movie “Poltergeist” for this story. But the lighting designer, Alan C. Edwards, and the sound designer, Junghoon Pi, deserve credit for doing an impressive job of special effects.

The gentler ghost is that of the family’s past, embodied by the piano. “The Piano Lesson” asks a simple question: What is the right way to live with your heritage? Hold on to your feelings about it and cherish a symbol of the past? Or put it to work for you to create a different kind of future? Part of Mr. Wilson’s genius is that he puts us in a position of believing in one argument rationally but clinging emotionally to the other.

There are no standout performances in the Yale Rep cast this time around. Berniece was played by S. Epatha Merkerson on Broadway. Samuel L. Jackson played Boy Willie in the first Yale Rep production, and Charles S. Dutton took on the role in New York. This time we have a strong ensemble cast, forcefully directed by Liesl Tommy. (Ms. Tommy’s past work has included “The Good Negro” and Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined.”) And what we get is a loving if not always inspired interpretation of a tense chapter in the Charles family’s lives. The lyricism in Mr. Wilson’s language finds its way into every plain-spoken character’s speeches.

Near the end of Act II, Boy Willie chides Berniece about “living at the bottom of life.”

“I’ll tell you this, and ain’t a living soul can put a come back on it,” he tells his sister. “If you believe that’s where you at, then you gonna act that way. If you act that way, then that’s where you gonna be. It’s as simple as that.”

“The Piano Lesson,” by August Wilson, is at the Yale Repertory Theater, 1120 Chapel Street, New Haven, through Feb. 19. Information: (203) 432-1234 or yalerep.org.

A version of this review appears in print on February 13, 2011, on Page CT11 of the New York edition with the headline: A Haunting ‘Piano Lesson’. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe